"I mean, you basically just, you know, it’s emotional, because we fly so much, as athletes and coaches,'' Johnson told reporters today in a 30-minute sit-down at the Nets' offices. "We’re gone all the time, and we’re flying on different aircraft that we don’t know the maintenance of the different aircraft, we don’t know, necessarily, how old they are, and how many miles, and we don’t really know the pilots.

"It's just so much that’s not really, anything that you can control,'' he continued. "So to understand how much we travel as an NBA team, and to see that plane go down like that, and so many lives are lost and for it to happen not too far from where we were in Moscow, it’s devastating.''

What made it even a little bit more personal to Johnson was the fact that Nets assistant coach Popeye Jones was in Russia with Johnson, giving coaching clinics to coaches and youth players. Jones' sons plays hockey (middle son Seth is on the U.S. Under-17 team), and would have been familiar with several of the Lokomotiv players who were killed in the crash.